These notes are intended to help you prepare your thinking about influencing goals ahead of your workshop.
To be even more successful, what would you need to influence? What would need to change? There may be many things, and some you may not feel in control of. However, please stretch your thinking and consider things which you could work towards over a period of several months which, when successful, would substantially improve your results and contribution to the organisation’s strategic objectives.
You may wish to liaise with others around your role as well however, don’t spend too much time. Often, allowing this to gestate between now and your workshop will suffice.
Here are some more notes on this topic to scan as they may help you refine your thinking.
General Guidance on Developing Influencing Goals
The ability to be very specific about what you want to influence will help you to influence other people far more effectively. Many people start with a general aim, e.g. to gain support for their personal development plans. This lacks bite and makes it harder to achieve. Far better is to be able to describe your goal in specific terms which others can easily understand and more readily agree with. An influence goal of “By the end of the month my boss will agree to fund my attendance at the Talent Management Conference in New York” is far more likely to help you get what you want.
The better clarity you can develop, the easier it will be for people to support you or uncover specific reasons why not. Either way, you will move forward on your goals more quickly.
Exercise: Selecting Influencing Goals (about 15 minutes)
Start by making a list of the key challenges that you need or want to influence within your work or perhaps with your business partners. Likely candidates for this list include…
- Projects you are responsible for either delivering or sponsoring.
- Disputes within your peer group.
- New product ideas that you want to gain support for.
- Units which are embattled and consensus over action is lacking.
- Projects that have stalled or are in crisis.
- Strategic change plans that have not yet reached implementation stage.
- Structural changes that are being contemplated.
Consider the following questions/statements to get more ideas…
- What one thing, if you could influence, would transform the results you achieve?
- What could you influence to remove all or most of the problems you face?
- “If only my line manager would…”
- “If I were the CEO, I’d…”
Review your ideas and select the three most important Influencing Goals to work on. Specify them as well as you can, perhaps using SMART as a guide.
Finally, test them out with some friends to see what they think. Are they important? Are they well specified? Will it be obvious when you have achieved your goal?
Once you’ve finalised your goals, you can now start using them as the focus for the Stakeholder Influence Process, planning and action.
Stretching Your Influencing Skills
If you are taking part in a programme of development to improve your capability to influence, you should note that some goals are more useful than others when developing your skills.
To be really useful when developing your skills, an influencing goal should…
- Require many people to think, feel or act differently when the goal is reached.
- Face opposition or competing ideas which will stretch your influencing ability.
- Require a plan of action over several months to reach the goal.
- Be an important part of your current role.
Put another way, a goal that is not suitable for developing your skills would be one which…
- Only needs one person to say yes.
- Could be achieved in one meeting.
- Has an easily understandable logic to agreement.
- Is more of a wish than a serious part of your work.